Monday, January 5, 2009
Change of Plans
The first day of Winter Quarter is today. My classes start tomorrow. I had decided I couldn't successfully trade stocks AND earn an A in my course, but I've decided to give it a go. The stock market is simply too attractive for me to ignore. It'll be a tremendous amount of work, but I concentrated on buying stocks and ETF's (Exchange Traded Funds) this weekend, that I feel comfortable turning my back on for several hours at a time so that I can study and attend classes. Housework is another...
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Saturday, January 3, 2009
Finding Humor
Getting my first anti-biotics today, I find myself able to get philosophically amused by almost everything. My husband tried to pry me away from Comedy Central tonight (from Las Vegas) to let me know he was glad to see me enjoying myself after being sick for several days. I had trouble getting him "off me" so I could get back to the jokes, then when the jokes were done I made up with him....lol....but didn't get too close because I'm still septic.... So anyway, I spent earlier this evening...
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Friday, January 2, 2009
Profit-Taking
I took profits today in the stock market (Jan. 2) because most of "the big boys" were probably on vacation and I wasn't ready to "hunker down" for the long haul if they came back and decided to take what few profits were available when they did come back. Seeing the Dow over 9,000 made me a bit dizzy....even though there should be some sort of honeymoon rally for Obama and all the stimulus that everyone is talking about. But stimulus doesn't address current state and local budget deficits, so...
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Thursday, January 1, 2009
14 Degrees and Mucinex Time
Cold is the word of the day. My husband had a cold for a week while I experimented with getting him to use loratadine (Claritin/Equate) to see if it weren't really an allergy. The problem is that when you have a cold your upper respies are very sensitive to exactly what drives upper respy allergy symptoms. After a week, he got over his cold and I've got it now. Bummer. And I forget exactly what our drugstore insists on substituting for Mucinex, which worked OK last evening, even though my...
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Monday, December 29, 2008
C-Span Video/DVD Library
What an amazing resource! Finding stuff on C-Span website is now a breeze. There is a SEARCH button along the top list at the site. I put "Shakespeare" into the search and got some amazing stuff. You can view these videos at your computer or you can order the DVDs and have them sent to you. I ordered five of these and passed up several that looked interesting, but you've gotta draw the line somewhere on spending, lol.... Once I get the confirmation email I'll copy it over for you. Please see...
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God's Secretaries by Adam Nicholson
This book is under discussion right now between a friend and me. I wanted to record the link for viewing or purchasing the C-Span 2 video of this author speaking about this book: http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=176146-1 The video is an hour and 12 minutes, btw. We are discussing whether or not Adamson wrote that the Apocrypha was lost from the bible, not because King James's translators had anything to do with it but because some...
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Notes on Shakespeare's Rebus-Labyrinth-Underground
Copyright © 2008 by Decshak Primary sources that I use in my book are Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, and Queen Elizabeth I, although, the first three sources occlude their meaning in reference to themselves and to others in their environment in the interests of privacy, safety, decency, and avoidance of slander -- not to mention amusement. The decoder, represented as an ass in Malvolio of Twelfth Night, the sheriff of Measure, for Measure, and as Caliban of The Tempest, also...
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Sunday, December 28, 2008
Busy Day
I worked hard today, caulking windows and painting because it was warm enough to do so. As for The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson I've been reading a few pages each evening before sleep and am now into Act 4, Scene 4. Not much happens in each scene except some scam is propagated on Fittzdotterel each time. One fellow dresses up as a woman and plays a Spanish lady who supposedly knows everything about how to dress and act at court. Lots of details are involved and lots of sub-scams among the scam...
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Saturday, December 27, 2008
Quarterly Pruning
I've started my quarterly pruning of this blog. It'll go back to being called Decoding Shakespeare when I'm done weeding out everything that doesn't relate to Shakespeare and research for the book -- except for page one, lol. These page one extraneous entries are projects that are too current for me to prune. Come to think on it, I have American Literature Winter Quarter. That is not too pertinent to Shakespeare, either, except for Mark Twain's influence on me and perhaps that guy who headed up...
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Thousands of Temp Jobs
Check your local newspaper for the story on Census Bureau temp jobs for your area. Starting very recently and late December plus early January -- I mean the 2nd and the 5th of January in our area -- thousands of temp job applications will be handed out by the Census Bureau. Our area is mostly rural so it covers several counties. A total of 6,000 temp jobs will go out to lucky individuals, covering jobs during 2009 for the 2010 Census of the United States. I'm really too busy to do it myself, and...
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Friday, December 26, 2008
Sugar Plums, Wind Energy, and Art Projects
Instead of sugar plums dancing in my wee little head tonight, I'm trying to imagine how I could build the cylindrical wind mills pictured here: http://www.greenenergytv.com/Watch.aspx?v=1113976021 from Graeme Attey. I'm trying to figure out the cheapest and easiest ways to build such a contraption, imagining various places and angles at which to place these around our house, as well as ways to decorate the cylinders for pleasing artistic effects as they spin.... They still need the armature...
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Fat and Sassy
Yes we can get fat. That's how I'm feeling these days. With all the parties and dinners of this season -- Thanksgiving dinner and Thanksgiving get-togethers; Christmas dinner, goodies, and Christmas parties; not to mention New Year dinner. I can't help but resolve to lose weight these days, evenings, mornings and nights. I started working out on our inexpensive eliptical machine in front of our TV last evening -- purportedly grinding away 300 calories in front of The Last Boy Scout. Even...
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Thursday, December 25, 2008
"Here comes Santa Claus. Here comes Santa Claus. Right down Santa
Claus Lane!" So, I have tunes in my wee little head on this Merry Christmas!
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Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Lest You Think I'm Nuts
I only recently noticed that Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park -- during one of the recent airings of these movies on TV. I'd been wondering who my mother might have written to, tentatively deciding on Steven Spielberg, but never knowing for sure. That she might have written to Crichton makes as much sense as anything. She and I lived apart for some 35 years and only spoke on the phone occasionally. She was a strongly dominant person (at least to my step-father and me but possibly not to men...
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Uses for Digital Cameras
These days you can buy a memory card for digital cameras which gives you space for 1000 photos, all of which you can access at will or put onto your computer. The projects for which photos are useful are started at http://www.popsci.com/diy/gallery/2008-12/ten-clever-tips-digital-camera-owners But I just found one. You know how upset you potentially could get when you have a limited number of dollars, you have your shopping calculated fairly closely, and get to the check-out counter to find the...
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Reading, Reading.
I finished my reread of Neuromancer, Strangely, it took me a bit of extra time to finish this book because the action was so intense during the last 20 pages or so that I had to take breaks from it. On the other hand, now that I've gotten my diversions accomplished, I have resumed my main project, which was to read four plays by Ben Jonson during this Winter Break from school. Everyone seems to be after the lady of the house, trying to corrupt her in The Devil is an Ass, but she's having none of...
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Panic Selling? Stock Split?
Three shorting Exchange Traded Funds just lost an amazing amount of money, overnight. What the F---? QID is one I'd been holding on other days, but not this day. SDS and PSQ were two other ETFs that fell exactly in tandem with the QID, which closed at $70 on Dec. 22, and opened at $60 on Dec. 23. I did a double take when I saw that price drop, which reminded me I'd better get the f------- prospectus. Then I started thinking, "Wait. This looks like a stock split," and went to the charts --...
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Monday, December 22, 2008
Where's the Christmas Rally?
It seems as though everyone expects a Christmas rally in the stock market, but where is it? One explanation I heard on Bloomberg TV today: "the American financial markets are quicker than the European financial markets" -- "Americans repatriated their dollars earlier, but Europeans are still or just now repatriating theirs" -- both quotes are approximate. When people go into or out of foreign stocks, there is a corresponding adjustment in currencies. When a lot of people are doing that in some...
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A Quote from Neuromancer from page 192 of 271 pages:
Definitely an influence on me: "Don' 'stan' you, mon," the Zionite said, nodding to the beat, "but we mus' move by Jah love, each one." I think Gibson set up this epiphany using two previous mysteries where Case wonders where his anger came from, was, or had gone.... Gibson's photo at the end of this book reminds me of my youngest uncle who was an egghead at chess, among other things, which shall remain nameless....but my mother beat him at chess when he was 18 years old....He's probably dead...
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Sunday, December 21, 2008
Misc.: Wind Power, Writers
Graeme Attey's wind configuration looks like the way to go. I obsessed for a time on one site's pronouncement that wind generators on houses suffer from too many vibrations, but Attey's "windmill" looks as though it may duck that foible. I suppose you could get two generators off the one set-up, except for the initial wind velocity that would be needed to get it started with that much weight added. Perhaps a vertical arrangement with magnetic levitation could work to reduce the initial wind...
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